Gontzal Tamayo Medel

Deputy Minister for Health and Digital Transformation, Basque Government (Eusko Jaurlaritza).

Gontzal Tamayo Medel leads the Basque Government's Viceconsejería de Salud y Transformación Digital, created in 2025 to drive the transformation of the Basque public health system. His portfolio spans health policy and prevention, quality and accessibility of care, and the digitalisation agenda — telemedicine, electronic health records, interoperability across care levels, and health outcomes measurement. He is a member of Osakidetza's governing body, chairs the Basque Primary Care Advisory Council, and sits on the Board of Trustees of Tecnalia. Before entering government, he spent nearly two decades as a consultant in Anaesthesiology and Critical Care at Cruces University Hospital in Bilbao, specialising in intensive care and major trauma, where he also served as a specialist-training tutor.

At the heart of his mandate is the Basque Health Pact (Pacto Vasco de Salud), built through a participatory process involving more than 400 professionals, patients, and social stakeholders, and translated into over 300 prioritised actions with public monitoring indicators. He is a strong advocate for consolidating health data governance in alignment with the European Health Data Space, expanding analytical capacity to guide planning and research, and incorporating artificial intelligence where it adds genuine value—governed by ethics, transparency, cybersecurity, and professional oversight. In December 2025, he led the Basque delegation to the Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Centre as part of the region's certification pathway under the EU Horizon Europe Cancer Mission's CCI4EU initiative, in which the Basque Country is one of ten selected advanced regions. He holds a degree in Medicine from the University of the Basque Country, a Master's in Infectious Diseases, and a postgraduate qualification in Healthcare Innovation and Management from Deusto Business School.